


The Second Wizarding War

by LadyBinx



Series: Lucinda Baker [18]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-09
Updated: 2017-07-09
Packaged: 2018-11-30 01:29:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 17,415
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11453157
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadyBinx/pseuds/LadyBinx





	The Second Wizarding War

As much as someone like me tries to live in the shadows, it isn’t always possible. I was prepared for emergencies, I had money, clothes and secrets hidden throughout the country but I was never prepared for The Dark Lord to return. Even though parts of my business hinted I had a small hand in helping those who awaited his return, it was beyond any of us to look at the bigger picture. It was simply unimaginable.

Long before the darker times began I had sold information to a man in the shadows. His disgustingly blonde hair shining in the dim light gave away his identity. I sold him information about vault 713. I was paid, I didn’t ask questions. Years later I was at the Quidditch World Cup and saw the Dark Mark. I wasn’t at the Triwizard Tournament, but of course I heard about Diggory. I never asked the right questions. The night Sirius died, the night we realized what was going to happen? It was too late for questions.

I had finally found him again the day before, meeting with him for one night. We spent the whole night together, and as the dull grey afternoon light crept through his heavy curtains I left him to go back to my place briefly. I needed to change my clothes and grabbed a few bottles of wine. I was only away for just a few hours, during which time he was called away to his duty. I came back to his house, and only the house-elf was there to receive me. He explained how Sirius had been called away by Order business. I sat in his kitchen all night, drinking wine, waiting. While Sirius had been fighting and dying; While He Who Must Not Be Named was finally revealed to the world; while we went to war.  
And this time it was worse. The Dementors joined him from Azkaban, giants tore their way through Europe towards Britain and the Death Eaters were on the prowl again.

I thought I could keep my head down, keep my business going. I even foolishly believed that with the lines of alliance so clearly drawn, I’d be making even more money as an underground go-between and informant. But a few of the Death Eaters remembered me – I hadn’t done anything big during the first war, but I’d made a few people’s lives more than difficult afterwards. I was coming home from the pub one day as the second war started to heat up, walking up to my little apartment in a muggle-heavy district of London. It was a cloudy night, as it always was in those days, with high black clouds blocking out the stars. I could tell something was going on before I turned into my street, because I could hear the sirens. Police cars and ambulances were gathered in front of my building, and as I paused I started to notice the shape in the sky. The Dark Mark flew in the clouds once more, lit from beneath by the dirty orange light of London’s night, and its own magical, green inner light flickering spookily deep inside the skull.

Muggles up and down the street were outside their front doors, or leaning out of windows, taking photos and talking animatedly about it with each other. The ambulances and police cars were all gathered outside of my building. From the number of ambulances, it looked like there had been many deaths. The police were keeping the public back, but the crowd was small, and I could see bodies being carried out on stretchers into the dark street and loaded into the bright, modern interiors of ambulances. Each body had a blanket over its face. I didn’t waste any time. Death Eaters would be lurking nearby, watching for me. I immediately turned around and walked away, disappearing into the streets of the borough before one of the Death Eaters I had blackmailed during the peace managed to enact his revenge.

I was in no hurry to find my hidden stashes of secrets while I was hunted by Death Eaters. Instead, I went to Diagon Alley and used a public owl service to send a letter. The streets were mostly deserted in those days, with as many shop fronts abandoned and boarded up as there were burned. I waited on the other side of the road to the Leaky Cauldron, rather than going in. The pub was all but deserted, much like the streets themselves. I tried to make myself look inconspicuous by examining the posters while I waited.

I wasn’t entirely alone. People hurrying down the streets in groups often stopped to check all the posters, to see if there were any new safety guidelines. The rest were all warning against the Death Eaters, and stressing the importance of security arrangements. ‘Beware Polyjuice potion: make sure your friend is your friend with codes’. ‘If you suspect someone of being under the Imperius Curse, remain calm and inform the Ministry’. ‘Unconfirmed sightings suggest Death Eaters may now be using Inferi. Any sightings or encounters with an Inferius should be reported to the Ministry IMMEDIATELY’. ‘You are advised not to leave the house alone’. ‘Arrange to complete journeys before night has fallen’. The large, blank wall covered with warning posters was starting to make me more and more anxious, which was presumably the opposite of the intended purpose. It was dark, and I was alone. I was starting to imagine that inferi were lurking in the shadows.

“Lucinda? I got your owl?” William asked, approaching me in a sidelong shuffle and looking over his dark glasses at me. Beneath them, his one eye looked scared and tired, the other covered by his eye patch.

“Take those off, you look ridiculous. We’re in a public place, its dark, and there’re two of us.”

“You know what they call two targets close together? A bigger target,” William said, but he took the glasses off as his lone eye roved crazily over the street.

“I need your help. I need to get out of the country. They came for me this evening,” I said, controlling my voice.

“For you? But to even find out where you live, they must have a man inside the Ministry, surely.”

“Don’t be naïve. They have several.”

“Bloody hell. Right, when do we leave?”

“Immediately,” I said eagerly.

“Okay,” said William, and there was a long moment while both of us waited for the other to speak before William continued, “Well, how do we leave?”

“I was hoping you’d know. The Ministry has closed the borders to stop Death Eaters getting to the giants in France.”

“Seriously? They can do that?”

“Well, they’ve stopped any international apparating, and portkey enchantments are being watched for.”

“We can fly. I’ve got a couple of broomsticks. They squirt bubbles from the brush-end, which makes them stall if you throttle down clumsily, but they should do the job.”

“The Ministry isn’t the only one closing the borders. The Unnamed One has his Dementors flying out at sea, preying on any ships or boats, muggles and wizards alike,” I said impatiently, “Even the ferries are harassed. The Aurors are stretched thin protecting the ferry to Ireland, let alone the cross-channel shipping. There’s no guarantee we’d make it across without an incident, and if either side found out we were trying to flee then we’d be in trouble.”

“There can’t be that many of them,” he said.

“Are you kidding? Have you been watching the weather? It’s been nothing but clouds, drizzle and depressing mist for months now. The Dementors have been growing,” I said darkly.

I used to have a few contacts with the Dementors, before they went rogue. They breed like fungus, dwelling in dark, damp places and spreading the corruption of spores and rot outwards in a never-ending cycle. If they get a solid foothold, it can be difficult to dig them out. A Dementor infestation has been known to utterly destroy villages and towns, leaving whole regions of countryside uninhabitable until large well-trained teams take on the job. There are suggestions that Dementor   
nests have killed a few whole civilizations in the distant past.

“So, neither the Death Eaters nor the Ministry will let us out of the damn country?” asked William.

“I’m pretty sure we’d have to fight our way out if we went by broom or boat. There must be another way, surely. You’re supposed to be a bloody genius. That’s why I needed to see you! They put the Dark Mark over my building!”

“Bloody hell!” William exclaimed, “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine, but we need to run far away.”

“I can’t just invent a damn portal,” he hissed, looking over his shoulders awkwardly with one eye before continuing, “Any spatial distortion needs a great deal of enchantment at its destination, not just its origin.”

“What about that cannon you were working on? Your idea of projecting capsules on rainbows?”

“All my research, plans and even the working model I constructed were seized by the Ministry last year. I was lobbying to get it back, but it seems like more important things are going on right now, eh? It’s a shame. One day I dreamt of sending wizards to the moon using that machine. Ah well,” he said sadly.

“And you can’t build another one?”

“I’ll need your help to get the supplies I need. And it’ll still take about a month. All my notes and designs were taken.”

“There must be a quicker way,” I muttered.

“Not that I can think of. And apparently, nor can you.”

“Fine. What do you need?” I asked moodily

I moved in with William. I only left the house to meet with smuggling contacts. Outside, the war got worse.  
The giants were trying to leave French shores and swim to Britain, and families were leaving the city to flee northwards in panic to Scotland or Wales as the monsters thundered across the countryside towards London. The whole wizard world was stretched thin, St Mungo’s was packed to the brim with wounded and William’s new machine was nowhere near completion.

And then August came. On the 1st of August, the Dark Lord seized power of the Ministry. Minister Scrimgeour was killed, the Aurors were compromised and everything started going to hell. William and I are both muggle-born. When the MBRC was formed, he received the letter just like I would have, if I was still in my little flat. There had already been a few thinly-veiled anti-muggle stories in the Daily Prophet before the letters were sent out, but on the day it arrived in the houses of the muggle-born wizards across the country, the Daily Prophet ran an article. It described how ‘so-called’ muggle-born wizards had all obtained our powers by theft or force. The Ministry had made a statement about being determined to root out such usurpers of magical power. But that doesn’t compare to the wording of the letter, summoning us to appear before the Muggle-Born Registration Commission. It invited William to ‘explain the origins of his magical power, including any crime or misdeed that led to its theft’. It instructed ‘bring with you full details of the wizard or witch victim, previously described as Squib, from which you obtained your power’. But at least it ended on a high note – ‘if you confess your guilt before the Commission, we may be merciful’. And then it gave a date and time. His hearing was due in three days. Before we both left the house, fleeing into the countryside like thousands of other wizards, we both contacted our various friends. It seemed as though each hearing was only scheduled to be half an hour long.

We left that morning.

First we tried apparting into muggle heavy areas, the idea being if we kept our heads down and didn’t use our magic they wouldn’t be able to trace us. We blended into the crowd of a high street, wandering along with the crowds of muggle shoppers. But every now and then we’d see someone who was probably a wizard or a witch. It was the eccentric clothes, and the distracted expressions as they looked around uncertainly at any plastic and all the cars. We couldn’t be sure whether they were refugees like us, or Death Eaters that had been sent after us specifically. During the day we saw three of them, and each time we changed direction abruptly, wandering into less populated shopping areas as the day wore on. The final time, I actually made eye contact with the eccentric woman. I pushed William into a shop and followed him quickly. We waited inside the herbal remedy shop, looking into each other’s eyes with anxiety and then exiting again a few moments later to walk in the opposite direction. Neither of us looked back.

Eventually, the paranoia got to us so badly that we had to duck into a café and have a cup of tea. William ordered a plate of fried egg, sausage and chips, which he picked at during the afternoon. Every time the waitress passed us, he picked up a cold chip and munched on it glumly, his usual appetite completely absent.  
The silence seemed to last for the whole afternoon as we watched every person walk into the café, weighed down with all the things we were too scared to say. My constantly suspicious mind started to get the better of me. Wandering past the glass window in the darkening afternoon, I saw the same eccentrically-dressed woman that I had made eye contact with. She just carried on past the café, without even glancing inside. But it was like a lightning bolt to my fear and paranoia.

“We need to go,” I said, standing up, “I can’t take all these people.”

“Okay,” William glanced at me, picking up his bag and putting some muggle money on the table. “Where do you want to go?”  
William noticed the panic starting to creep across my controlled expression. I didn’t know where to go; I hadn’t been expecting to go on the run quite like this ever before. I always planned for a few people to be after me, but not the whole wizarding population of the United Kingdom. It was becoming too much for me to handle. William reached out and seized my hand, bringing me out of my thoughts.

“Come on. I think I know somewhere,” he said sadly.

We finally settled on a place in the evening. I assume we were in the north as it was so cold, but it was hard to tell with the Dementors breeding. We were amongst dark, dense woods. The plants were thick, good for hiding, not so good for getting away, but it was becoming dark quickly. The trees were blowing wildly in the dark sky, filling the forest with white noise. Every now and then I thought I heard a branch snap or a footstep – it was nothing but the wind in the trees, shaking loose twigs and things. I started a meagre fire, its flames and smoke whipped up by the wind into an occasional vortex. William set up the protective charms.

“You shouldn’t use your wand any more than you have to,” I said, “They can trace all sorts of things. They’ll be looking especially closely at any spells that are cast out in the wilderness, like this place.”

“Yeah, I know,” said William grumpily.

As the darkness set in we sat around the fire and slowly picked at a meal that William’s house elf, Hoppy, had prepared for us before we left. It was refried beans with beef mince, and a mouth-watering spice blend that we totally ruined by warming it up over the fire. We sat in silence most of the night.

“It’s been so long since I lived like a muggle,” William sighed. Being well quite well known in the wizarding world had often worked in advantage for William, and subsequently for me. His parents had died when he was younger and he had shunned the muggle world since leaving Hogwarts. I found many muggle born wizards had ‘forgotten’ muggle ways, maybe it was because they were lazy, but I found the muggle way had its uses. It had certainly gotten me out of trouble more than a few times.

“What is Hoppy going to do?” I asked.

“The elves are determined to look after themselves. She says she’s joining up with a whole group of them to hide somewhere. She didn’t even want to tell me where.”

“Why not?”

“She said it was in case I was caught. I think the other elves are all pretty insistent on cutting all ties with wizards. They don’t see any future for our kind, it seems.”

“It’s not impossible to find elves when you know where to look, even when they’re hiding,” I said, remembering an occasion when I had cause to track down an elf for his erstwhile owners – I did find the poor creature, but I let him go.

“I don’t think finding them will be an issue. There was something in her voice. Like something in her eyes. I think she expects us all to die,” he said quietly. His single eye was growing red, and he rubbed at it with a heavy sigh, “Damn this smoke.”

“Where do you think they’ve gone?”

“Hell, I don’t know. A secret kingdom? An underground city? Another dimension?” he said grumpily.

I looked down into the beans and beef that I was eating, and wondered what Hoppy had been feeling when she cooked it. Had she thought it would be our last meal? She must at least have thought it would be the last meal she ever cooked for us. I put the plate down, determined to make her last gift to me last as long as possible. It would be fine to reheat this several times, and despite our incompetent fire-cooking it was still delicious. I thought about that determinedly generous elf – the way she insisted upon being a good hostess, offering you everything it was in her power to give you – and wondered where she was now. I hoped she was safe, and happy. And that the other elves appreciated her excellent cooking.

William pulled blankets from his luggage and handed me one, while he wrapped the other around himself miserably. My mind began to wonder, thinking about everyone I knew. All the people I’d been at school with, all the officials and government personnel I had a good relationship with, all the smugglers that I bantered with, all the petty crooks and illicit dealers that I had laughed with in the pub. I wondered about the barman at the Leaky Cauldron. And then, for the first time in days, my mind turned to my parents.  
“William,” I avoided his gaze as my voice began to crack, “Do you think… Are my parents safe?” William pulled me closer and put his arm over my shoulder, bringing one large wing of blanket around me. He tried to comfort me, but he couldn’t answer me. The truth was that none of us were safe anymore – nobody on the planet. We sat in silence, listening to the wind rushing through the noisome trees and the paranoia-twitching audio-hallucinations.

William is aware of my relationship with my parents. They’re muggles, obviously, so they’ve never really understood anything about wizards. They’re usually fairly disinterested, and they get confused when I start to explain anything about the war. They have real trouble believing that the wizards have hidden themselves so effectively for so long. I’ve never tried to tell them about my work – I’ve dismissed my employment with a lie that I work as an auction agent for Gringotts, the bank. Needless to say I haven’t tried to explain about the wide range of magical creatures and races that also exist. They accept my lies with unquestioning trust. They never doubt the nature of the money I give them. To be fair, even if they did, there wouldn’t be much they could do about it since I pay almost all of my mother’s medical bills. Ultimately, their ignorance makes me quite sad. Sometimes I think they can tell. But would it be better if they were fully aware of a fantastic world to which they will never belong?

As I sat there that night in front of the fire, with William’s arm around me, I realised I hadn’t seen them in over a year. I stared into the fire and wondered about whether the Death Eaters knew where they were. I hoped they didn’t, but ultimately that was all I could do until the morning. I leaned my head against William’s shoulder and I felt my eyes drooping. While I was still paranoid, the relative peace of the forests was a massive relief from the crowds of the towns. It’s amazing how exhausting it can be when you’re in constant fear for your life, even for just one day. As my mind lost focus, finally, and I felt my awareness slipping away into the beautiful oblivion of sleep, I felt William’s head slowly rest against mine as he also succumbed.

We woke up in the cold, grey light of pre-dawn. My back was killing me, my bum had lost all feeling and my feet were completely freezing. I lifted my head from William’s shoulder, disturbing him so suddenly that he almost fell over backwards. I wiped the crust from my eyes and the drool from my mouth with the edges of the blanket wrapped around my hands. Then I tugged the blanket closer around me, suddenly aware of the damp grey mist drifting through the trees. William stood up, sniffed loudly and coughed as he pulled out his wand.

“No, don’t,” I said, reminding him.

“Fucking hell,” he complained.

He went to piss in the forest, and as the sun rose above the trees I stretched out my legs and arms, trying to ease my stiff muscles. I held my wand in my hand, turning it over in my fingers and wondering what to do with my day – and what would happen to us all. When William returned, we snuggled back under the blankets and poked the fire back into life.

“I’m hungry,” said William, eventually.

“Yeah, me too,” I replied.

“I should check on my parents.”

“What?”

“From afar. I just need to know they’re okay.”

“If you visit them, you might bring the Death Eaters to them. Or, like, whatever they are now that they’re in power.”

“If they already know where they are, then I need to move them somewhere safe.”

“How are you going to do that without attracting attention?”

“I don’t know! I just need information!”

“We need to lie low, you said so yourself,” he said quietly.

“Listen William, I’m not going to sit around doing nothing, asking questions to people who don’t know any answers. Information is what I do. The longer I sit here, not knowing anything while the world changes, the more powerless I become! We can lie low and still learn something, right? I just want to check on my family.”

“Well, I’m not letting you go alone.”

“I’ll be fine,” I said.

“We’ll go check on your parents, then we’ll get some breakfast,” he said firmly.

We apparated to the other side of my hometown from my parents house – just to be safe. William and I took the bus, paying with muggle change and dragging our luggage to the back of the bus. Everyone was reassuringly dull-looking, with care-worn faces and blank eyes as the bus rumbled down the roads. The people closest to us shifted uncomfortably, reacting to our lived-in smell. A few of them glanced at William, with his beard and eye-patch. Otherwise, as usual, nobody spoke.

It was very strange seeing my old road, and my old family house. I had been back since I left school, of course, but with every visit my old neighbourhood had become stranger and stranger to see. I had changed so much over the years, from a bright-eyed and eager little girl into a harassed and paranoid teenager, then slowly a confident, quiet informational mercenary. And yet, the street had remained almost the same. The cars, bins and streetlights had changed, along with most of the inhabitants. Cobblestones had been replaced with asphalt. But the soul of the place had grown stranger to me with every passing year.  
The early morning was turning into the day, and the sun was rising over the houses opposite. But the sky was still angrily murky, so what should have been a glorious golden dawn was just a sickly, pale illumination. It was a terraced block, with pale guttering and windows, dark slate roofs and obsolete chimneys hosting a wide array aerials and satellites. Cars were parked all along the road, hugging the curb, and the bins were all in front of the houses so the entire road seemed narrow and claustrophobic. There was the house with the china cat in the window, and there was the house packed full of a usually-angry family. The house next door to my parents was occupied by an old lady whose dog was always, always barking. I was actually disturbed to walk past her house and not hear the dog. The entire road was quiet, which was slowly winding up my nerves.

“Are we going in?” William asked, as we walked past my parent’s front door. I only glanced around, staying casual in case anyone was watching, but William stopped and looked the house up and down. I tutted impatiently, but kept walking until he trotted after me.

“No, we’re not going in.”

“Everything looks fine. Nothing broken, no signs of violence. No skulls floating in the clouds, obviously,” he said as he caught up to me, squeezing between a wheelie-bin and a lamp post.

“It could still be a trap,” I said, “We’re going to wait up the road until my dad goes out to the shop.”

“How long will that take?” William groaned.

“They usually get up early. We should only be here for another hour or two. Then we can get some breakfast,” I said impatiently as we crossed the road.

“Is there somewhere nearby?”

“I’m not moving until I know they’re okay,” I said as a car pulled into the road, honking at us. We both leapt out of the street quickly, surprised by the sudden noise in the otherwise quiet area. William was reaching for his wand, but he kept his hand in his coat, out of sight.

“Lucinda?” said someone. I recognised the voice. With a sinking heart, I looked around and saw my father getting out of the car that had honked at us. It was an old car, but I didn’t recognise it - another dodgy used car from the used car shop at the end of the high street.

“Hi, dad,” I said, turning. William paused, next to me, also turning.

“Lucinda, hello. What are you doing here, so early? Why didn’t you call? Is everything okay?”

“Yes, everything is fine,” I lied. It was almost instinctive.

My dad was a short man, barely as tall as me. He had thick, dark hair that clustered over his dense eyebrows. His amiable, beady eyes were nearly lost between his eyebrows and large nose. He loped around his car like a horse, his spindly arms swinging big hands.

“Obviously it’s not, girl. Come inside,” he said to me, “Have some breakfast. Bring your friend.”

“What are you doing up so early, dad?” I said, not moving.

“I just had something to take care of,” he said, waving a dismissive hand. He had no jewellery but his wedding ring, no expression but an absent-minded, friendly smile. “Come on. Do you still just want water and toast for breakfast?”

“Yes, please.”

“And what about this guy? Hello, my name is George Baker, I’m Lucinda’s father,” he said, glancing up and down at William while he extended his hand. William shook it, reluctant to say anything.

“William Grey,” he muttered. As soon as he was done shaking my father’s hand, he was looking up and down the street, his single eye once more roving crazily.

“Let me park the car, then we’ll get inside. Your mum’s been asking after you, as usual,” he said, watching William’s eye.

“We shouldn’t stay,” I tried to protest.

“You can’t come all this way and not say hello to your old mum,” he said, a disapproving edge to his voice.

“Alright, fine. But just a cup of tea,” I said to William warningly. He nodded.

My house has always seemed small, even when I was very young. I always wanted to be outside. The hallway was narrow and dark, and the coat-hooks on the wall filled the space with a large obstacle of thick jackets and winter coats. The kitchen was narrow too, with barely enough room for the oven, washing machine and sink, let alone the shiny new dishwasher, microwave and large fridge. My dad started boiling the kettle while I lingered in the corner and William lurked near the doorway uncertainly.

“Lucinda, why don’t you show William into the living room? I’ll bring the tea through. I’m just going to wake up your mum. Milk or sugar, William?”

“Two sugars but no milk, thanks,” he said.

“And you? Still the same as ever?”

“Yes please, dad,” I said, and it felt strangely comforting to say those words. I saw him smile about it too, as he got the mugs from the cupboard.

Me and William wandered through into the living room while my dad rattled about in the kitchen. The living room was all cream and violet, with ugly floral wallpaper. The sofa and two armchairs squeezed into the room had matching fabric, and there was a small TV sitting on a side-table next to the obsolete fireplace. The light through the lace curtains bleached the cream of the room, turning it almost pink. On the mantelpiece there were several china shepherdesses that my mum had inherited from her own mother, my grandma. I heard my dad pottering up the stairs and waking up my mum.

When I was younger, my mum had suffered a stroke that had badly damaged her brain. I had funded the best rehabilitation for her, but it had been fairly ineffective. There were also muscle problems and chronic, non-descript pain of the sort that no doctor could cure, only medicate. I had consulted with the best Healers at St Mungo’s, but they know less about treating brain damage than muggles. The brain is one of the organs that defies magical understanding quite often, and is better understood with empirical science.

My mum limped down the stairs, supported by my dad. She walked into the living room and reacted with startled, upset astonishment when she saw William.  
“Mum, this is William,” I said, “He’s one of my oldest friends.”

“And is he also a… wizard?” she asked, looking quizzically at my dad who shrugged.

She has frizzy, light brown hair and weak, watery eyes above a perpetually pursed, stern mouth. She hasn’t really changed out of her pyjamas for years.

“I am, yes,” he said, getting up. My mum shrank back from him, looking up at his bearded, one-eyed face uncertainly. He extended his hand, and she shook it like she was touching fire. “It’s nice to finally meet you, Mrs Baker. I’ve heard a lot about you over the years.”

“I wish I could say the same,” she said, as my dad helped her into her chair. She relaxed into it gratefully, “If I’d known you were coming, I’d have tidied.”

“It’s okay, mum.”

“What time is it?”

“It’s the early morning,” I said, glancing at the mantelpiece where an ornate carriage clock had always been. William and my dad both picked up on it too. It’s ticking was clearly audible.

“What are you doing here so early? You don’t normally get up until the mid-morning,” my mum said.

“That’s what I was wondering too,” said my dad, still lurking by the doorway.

“How’s that tea coming along?” I asked him, and bless him he scurried off right away, despite his expression that told me he would need answers at some point.

“You have a very nice house,” said William to my mum.

“Thank you. Do you like the curtains? They’re new.”

“They’re very nice,” said William.

The curtains had been there for years.

“So, how do you know my daughter?” my mum continued.

“We were at school together. We’ve sort of been friends ever since.”

“And what do you do? Do you work for the auction house?”

“Yes,” said William, without even looking at me, “I work for the auction house. I restore paintings.”

“Here we are,” said my dad, coming back into the room with a plastic tray of mugs. The tray had the face of Princess Diana on it. I got up to take my tea from my dad’s wobbling balance, handing William his. My mum took hers from the tray with even shakier hands. My dad had filled the mug only half-full for exactly this reason.

“We can’t stay very long,” I said.

“So you said,” my dad grunted as he sat down, “But what’s going on?”

“Well, that’s a pretty long story,” I sighed.

“I knew you were in some kind of danger,” my dad said.

“What? What danger?” squawked my mum.

“You guys might have to go into hiding for a bit,” I said quietly.

“Lucinda, the Death Eaters might not know anything about your parents,” William said.

“What’s a Death Eater?” my dad asked.

“Is this something to do with your magic?” asked my mum.

“Okay. Mum, dad, I need to tell you some things. Some things have been happening, and it’s not good.”

“What is it?” asked my mum, her mug halfway to her mouth.

“There’s a war going on. It started a few months ago,” I said.

“It’s not going on anymore,” William added, unhelpfully.

“Right. Yes, I suppose not. We lost, dad,” I said sadly.

“What does that mean?” demanded my mum, sipping her tea. “Ow! Fuck!” she exclaimed, dropping the mug on her knee. Then it bounced onto the carpet. “Oh, now   
look! Why was it so hot?” she demanded. Thankfully it didn’t spill on her, but she was clutching her knee in shock and dismay.

My dad was on his feet immediately, rushing for paper towels from the kitchen. My mum was sucking on her bottom lip and looking tearfully upset. William was looking more and more uncomfortable while my dad returned with paper towels and started soaking up the spilt tea, laying one hand on my mum’s trembling knee. She put her hand on his, comforted by it.

“Is there anything I can do to help?” William asked.

“It’s fine,” my dad murmured, “What were you saying? About a war?”

“There are these people called Death Eaters. They think I’m not a real wizard because you guys are my parents.”

“I don’t understand,” said my mum.

“They hate us because our parents weren’t wizards,” William tried to explain.

“They don’t sound very nice,” she said.

“How badly do they hate you? You called them Death Eaters?” my dad asked.

“Why do you never tell us about these things?” my mum asked sadly.

At that point, there was a knock on the front door. It was a slow, deliberate series of three confident knocks. Then it seemed someone found the doorbell button. It was a harmless, mundane-sounding ding-dong. William and I both stood up, suddenly alarmed, pulling out our wands. My dad was on his feet too.

“You think they were hunting you?” he asked me.

“They must be. I wanted to know whether you were being watched.”

“What?” asked my mum, alarmed, still sucking on her burnt lip.

“You guys go out the back,” my dad said, not missing a beat. “I’ll get the door.”

“Lucinda!” my mum exclaimed.

“Shush, Deirdre. It’s okay,” my dad said compassionately, “It’s nothing to worry about. I just need to take care of something. Lucinda has to go now, but she’ll be back,” he said, giving me a sidelong glance.

“Bye, mum. Sorry I couldn’t stay longer,” I said, pushing William into the kitchen.

“When will you be back?” she asked forlornly, not getting up.

“Soon!” I called back as we opened the back door. As we closed it quietly behind us, I heard my dad opening the front door. I paused, listening at the open kitchen window. I couldn’t make out any of the words, but then there was a loud bang.

“Shit!” I exclaimed, and was about to pull open the back door and rush back into the house, to see what had happened, when I heard a voice above me.

“Stay right there.”

“Sweet Merlin,” muttered William, looking up at something near the roof. I turned my head awkwardly, trying not to move more than necessary. Sure enough, I had a wand pointed at me. A man was hovering on a broom above me, a black hood with eye-holes over his head. His long black cloak flew out behind him. I took the time to look around at the other neighbouring houses – across the small back garden of gravel and pavement, there was an alleyway beyond the fence. Beyond that were more back gardens and the rear of another row of terraced houses. I could see curtains twitching, and while part of my brain was in a panic, another part wondered what the new regime would do about the Statute of Secrecy.

“How did you find us?” I demanded.

“We were watching your house, idiot.”

There was a flash of blue light from the kitchen window, beyond the lace curtains. It wasn’t green, but it still drove me to instant action. I pulled open the kitchen door, but my dad was already there, coming out of it. He dived to the side of the door as a curse flew out past him, narrowly missing the both of us. William was firing a spell up at the man on the broomstick, but must have missed. Sparks showered down around me and my dad as we both sheltered from the kitchen door.

“Mum’s still in there!” I shouted.

“I know, don’t worry,” he said, his voice eerily calm. In his hand there was an old six-shooter. My dad has a past similar to mine. I’ve never really been aware of the specifics, but I know that when I was very young he was occasionally involved in crime and is often questioned by the police even now. I think he predates the Cray twins and that whole east-London gangster scene but then he’s never told me much about it and I’ve never asked. He must have been keeping the gun in one of the jackets next to the front door. Fully loaded.

“I think I got one of the fuckers,” he told me, peering around the edge of the back door.

“Are you sure they’re wizards?” I said while the man on the broomstick shot spells at William, who deflected them before shooting a few of his own.

“One of them tried to pull a stick on me. A wand, whatever,” he said.

“You shouldn’t have shot at them,” I said as William managed to hit the man on the broomstick. He yelped in pain and surprise, his broomstick bucking under him suddenly and throwing him off. He landed with a sickening crunch at the back of the garden.

“I’m not about to let Nazis carry off my baby girl,” said my dad. William tied up the hooded wizard, then pulled off the man’s cowl.

“Do we know him?” asked William, rolling the unconscious body over with his foot.

“What about mum?” I demanded.

I heard a sound from inside my parent’s house that chilled me more than anything else so far. It was the noise of maniacal laughter, all too familiar. High-pitched, feminine and insane. I had known that laugh when it chased me through the corridors of Hogwarts, so many years ago.

“Who was at the door?” I asked.

“A man and a woman.”

“Did the woman have wild black hair and crazy eyes?”

“Yeah.”

“Oh shit,” muttered William, joining me as we crouched behind the wall, “Lestrange?”

“I’d know that laugh anywhere.”

“Who is she?”

“She’s a fucking lunatic,” I muttered. There was another flash of light, and I heard my mum scream, long and drawn-out. My dad’s face turned pale, and he hurtled back through the door. I heard two more gunshots, and then the zap of a noisy spell.

“William, stay here. Stay low. I have a plan,” I said, wordlessly summoning the abandoned broomstick to my side.

“What?!”

“I need to lure Lestrange away from here. See if you can take care of this whole situation, okay? Take care of my parents.”

There were police sirens a few streets away, getting closer.

“What do you mean take care of it?!”

“There’s no time! Hide!” I demanded. He tipped over the wheelbarrow in the far corner, disturbing some of the empty pots piled alongside it that my mum had always meant to fill with plants and flowers. “Lestrange!” I bellowed, mounting the broom, “You pureblood inbred prison-bitch! Get the fuck out here!”

“What the hell?” muttered William as I soared up into the air, hovering several feet above the kitchen door.

“Is that you, Lucy?” came Bellatrix’s voice, from inside the kitchen. I didn’t reply – didn’t want to give away my position. This was the woman who had killed Sirius, while I was sitting at his kitchen table growing frantic with worry. And now she was here, in my parents house. And my parents...  
I was going to kill this woman.

“I think I’ve broken your mummy and daddy,” Bellatrix continued, “Muggles are so fragile. So delicate, so vulnerable. They’re like balloons, they pop at the slightest prick,” she shouted, and there was another flash of light. My father screamed.

“No!” I shouted, involuntarily. I’m usually in control of my emotions, but who can blame my reaction.

“There you are!” she shouted gleefully, and pounced out of the back door, shooting spells up at me. I pushed off from the house wall, dodging her curses. I zipped over to the gardens opposite, ducking beneath the fence and firing my own spells back at her. People were staring out of the windows now, agog and amazed. I could also see a few bits of William, sticking out from behind the wheelbarrow. Bellatrix was standing defiantly at the doorway, shooting spells randomly now, only vaguely trying to hit me. “You never could stand still! Always running away, like a scared little mouse!”

“At least I’m not a cunt!” I shouted back. Not my cleverest line, but it had the effect I wanted. She raised her wand, summoning her own broom. I heard a crash of glass, and then her broom exploded through the kitchen window. It must have been resting against front of the house, then ploughed its way through. She mounted it side-saddle then threw one leg over, her dark, maniacal eyes now fixed on me from across the alleyway. I was already soaring away, over the rooftops, firing a few spells back at her to keep her interest. I would get her away from my parents, let William deal with their trauma and the police. Then I’d kill Bellatrix somewhere safe. Somewhere that nobody would be caught in the cross-fire.

I soared away over the rooftops. I wasn’t speeding away – I didn’t want to lose Bellatrix. This broom was powerful, and threatened to pull away into the sky with the slightest throttle. I rolled to the left, turning upside down several times as I corkscrewed violently through the air. Sure enough, spells were shooting past me. I turned out over the rooftops, doing my best to fly low while avoiding the aerials and satellite dishes. Explosions of green fire exploded in front of me as Bellatrix kept missing. A chimney pot exploded right in front of me. I managed to bank hard right, but my coat got caught on an aerial and nearly choked me as it tore apart. My momentum carried on, though, and in the half-second it took for the aerial to tear itself free I was in a wild, spiralling, whirling flight with the world spinning around me. I must have been flung upwards, and I felt Bellatrix whoosh past my feet. I recovered fast, fighting back nausea and disorienting dizziness as I flew a serpentine pattern into the clouds, too far away. The cold air racing past me was making my hands and legs numb, but it helped me recover from the crazy spiral.

Glancing behind me, I could see Bellatrix closing in, so I sped up and started diving low again, aiming for the edge of the town where there was a bridge over a river. I tried to fly erratically, but she was compensating, and several of the spells sizzled against my hair – it was only good luck that kept me out of their way. If I could just make it to the river, I was sure I could turn it around and bring her out of the air. I had to whizz across a motorway, swerve between two tall council flats and pull up over a row of three-story warehouses, but this meant that Bellatrix never got a decent shot. I dove back to the ground and sped along the river, following the slow curve beneath the bridge. Glancing back once more, I could see the furious look on her face. She had her wand permanently out in front of her, eager to shoot me down, but it interfered with her flying. I was feeling confident.

I should have been looking where I was going. When I looked ahead again, a steep concrete embankment was in front of me. I roared with effort as I tried to pull the broom to the side, slowing it down as much as I could. That was when Bellatrix finally got her chance, and managed to finally hit the bristles of my broom with a spell. I didn’t see it, but I felt the lurch. Desperately, I tried to recover my flight, but in the corner of my vision I could see bright flames flickering. Before I knew it, I was only a few inches above the water, and then everything was cold and wet, air and water blending together in foam and bubbles. I was blinded, there was a roaring in my ears, water was in my nose and throat. I floundered chaotically, panicking, confused, not knowing which way was up. I was choking, but at some point I managed to get some air into my lungs before the water tried to reclaim me.

There was a bright green flash in the water next to me, and I realised which part of the world was the surface of the water. I floated up, looking around for Bellatrix. She was flying past again, shooting another curse down at me. I felt the river bed beneath me, or at least something firm. I don’t know how, but I’d somehow managed to keep my wand in my hand. I shot some magic up at the sky, randomly, without aiming. There was a set of concrete stairs leading up the embankment I’d swerved to avoid, so I started wading towards them. The water and slippery riverbed slowed me down. I was coughing up water. My head reeled. I didn’t realise that Bellatrix had stopped firing. I made it to the stairs, and clambered up onto them wearily, shaking my head to clear my senses. Panting, fuzzy-brained, I looked up the stairs. There were a lot of people gathered on the embankment, staring down at me. One of the faces resolved into Bellatrix. Her wand was pointed right at me. There was a flash, and then darkness.

I would like to say that I’d had a final thought. Maybe that I’d died with hope that William had saved my parents, or that I’d managed to get one last evil glare at Bellatrix. Maybe that my life had flashed before my eyes, or that I had looked out at the river in one last art-house moment. Even a tired sigh would have been nice. But it was just sudden oblivion.

The first thought I had when I woke up was that I hadn’t died. Then everything came flooding back, and I struggled to sit up. My head felt bruised. Apart from that, I just felt hungry and sore. I was in a cell made of white stone, with a steel door. There were others in the room. I felt for my wand, but it had been taken from me.

“Where am I?” I asked with a croak, “How long have I been unconscious?”

“Shush. If we talk, they come,” said the voice of a little girl.

“Where am I?” I repeated.

“You’re in a holding cell in the Ministry of Magic,” said an older voice, “We’re all waiting to be tried by the Muggle-Born Registration Commission.”

“How long have I been out?” I asked.

“It’s hard to tell the time, in this place. Since last night, maybe. If this is the morning.”

I patted down my pockets – sure enough, I had nothing. Everything had been taken. “And you’re all here to be tried, too?”

“Shush, or they’ll come!” said the voice of the little girl.

It was hard to make out specific people in the dark cell, with no windows or light sources apart from the tiny barred window in the steel door. There were at least a dozen of us, with the smell of a lived-in, crowded space. At least we each had a bed to sit on, even if they were crowded in like sardines. I could see several small children, and at least two ancient people with white hair that seemed to glow in the darkness.

“Who’s they?” I asked.

“The Ministry has new jailers,” said someone.

“They come if we’re happy, or noisy,” said an old man in a trembling, sorrowful, terrified voice.

“They mostly come at night,” said the little girl, “Mostly.”

“Mainly they come when we’re sleeping, and feed on our dreams,” the old man added.

“I’ve never had such nightmares,” said someone else.

“Dementors,” said one woman, and there was a collective shudder in the cell.

“That makes sense,” I said, “I heard the Dark Lord promised those bastards more power, freedom and food. This must be how he’s doing it.”

“Shut the fuck up!” insisted one of the strangers, “If you bring them back, I’ll smack the shit out of you.” There was anger in his voice, but it was caused by barely-concealed fear. I wondered what kind of terror he felt, and whether part of it was guilt. They used to say that the Dementors of Azkaban can do strange things to a man, but that the man has usually done most of those things to himself before he arrives.

“There are kids here,” someone told him off.

“Who said that? Are you really going to protect them from swearing, when we’re all snacks for Dementors?” he demanded, “Get your fucking priorities straight.”

“Can everyone just shut up!”

“You could at least maintain some standards,” said a stern woman.

“When they haul us out of this cell, nobody comes fucking back! I’ll swear as much as I damn want, it’s all the fucking same in the end,” said the angry man, his voice cracking with tension.

“Wait, do you feel that?” said someone quietly. There was silence as everyone paid attention, as if they were listening. But it was more like paying attention to your own emotions, or listening to your own mind. Sure enough, the bleak feelings and anxiety were transforming, deepening, sharpening. I could tell from the atmosphere in the room that everyone else could feel it too. 

“Oh no,” someone else muttered, “They’re coming.” 

Then the temperature started to fall, my breath fogging in front of me, wisps of mist only seen against the barred window. And then I could hear the ragged, wheezing breath of one of them, echoing noisily in the corridor outside the door. I know a few tricks and spells to get around Dementors, but most of them depend on having my wand. There are mental procedures, like meditation, but there was no time now to teach it to the children. While everyone descended into miserable moans, silent tears, desperate whimpers and crazy mutterings, I folded my legs under me and cleared my mind. I calmed my emotions, focusing on my breathing. Despite this, I still felt my heart sinking, my courage and character failing. While I’ve never been very emotional, it was hard to rely on my core of reason and logic. Of course I was anxious about my parents. As the Dementor’s presence started to unsettle me, I became less and less certain that William would have been any help to them. When Bellatrix had defeated me, she would have returned to their house. Had William fled with my parents? He would have known to take them somewhere safe. He would have moved fast. But would it have been fast enough? Were my parents even alive, when I left? Did I miss their last moments of life? If so, it would have been my fault, bringing Death Eaters to their house. I even left William behind, to take care of their dead bodies. Only to be snatched up by Bellatrix, or some other Death Eater. I wondered what cell he was in, and started obsessing over whether my parents would rather be cremated or buried – I didn’t know. The last noises I had heard them make were screams of pain and fear. They echoed around my head, long after the Dementor had wandered off.

Time truly had no meaning in that cell. The only toilet was a hole in the floor, in the far corner of the room. Some people were polite enough to avert their eyes, or cover their ears. Some people, the ones who had been there since they tried to flee their summons, no longer cared. I found it very difficult to use the hole, but I eventually I grew too desperate. At some point in the enduring, shuffling, snivelling silence of the cell block, bowls of food were delivered through a magical hatch in the iron door. It was thin, watery gruel. I thought longingly of the last meal I’d had – Hoppy’s reheated leftovers. A big, bullying wizard tried to take the children’s gruel, but others stood up to him until the Dementors came again. It was the same as before, but I managed to stay calmer for longer. And then someone called a name into the cell.

“Cecila Mosley?” asked the booming, thuggish voice at the door. There was an awkward, terrified silence. “Cecilia Mosley?” asked the voice again. Again, nobody answered. “Bring me Cecilia Mosley or I send the Dementors in there,” he said.

“I-I’m Cecilia Mosley,” said an old woman, who had been cowering silently in the corner the whole time. She was one of the ones who had cried while going to the toilet over the hole, struggling with the awkward posture. She hobbled over to the iron door, her frail body trembling. The door slammed open, squeaking with metal under sudden stress. She hobbled through the door slowly, without looking back. Everyone was silent. And then the door slammed shut.  
When I look back on it now, the worst part isn’t seeing her tiny, hunched body wandering off into the light. Nobody tried to do anything. That’s the worst part. How nobody offered any words of comfort. Nobody said anything. I try explain to myself that we were cowed, confused, scared victims – lost in time and beaten emotionally. But still the silence weighs on my mind. Sometimes, in my dreams, it swallows me.

I slept. There were miserable, terrible nightmares. I went to the toilet when I woke up, listening to the cautious, terrified whispers of my cellmates. Then I lay back down on my bed, and slept again. Food was delivered. More fights. More Dementors.

I have no idea how long I was inside that cell. It may have been a single day. It may have been a month. People were thrown in, and others were taken out – some willingly, some dragged out by their hair. Eventually, it was my turn. When I stepped out of that room, I was astonished at the new smell of the corridor. I had grown so accustomed to the unwashed stink of the crowded cell that even in this passageway so deep inside the Ministry, the air was fresher. I blinked uncomfortably in the bright lights, looking down at my hands with surprise. They were thinner than I remembered, and I felt weak. I was almost too weak to feel fear, but I tried to marshal my thoughts. As I was led through the passages, past silent iron doors with countless more people inside, I started to realise just how many muggle-borns had been rounded up. At the same time, I was further and further away from the Dementors, which helped.  
“Could I use your shower?” I asked the guard behind me, in as joking and sardonic tone as I could manage. He had cold blue eyes, and when he sneered at me I saw his broken teeth. There was a scar on his stubbly jaw, and when he moved his mouth it looked like the skin of custard or tomato soup being gathered up. He just shoved my shoulder roughly, forcing me to stumble on.

“How about just a bathroom sink?” I asked, still defiant. He shoved me harder, and I nearly fell, so I stayed quiet.

We clambered down some steep, stony spiral stairs and through some more corridors, eventually emerging through a door into a much larger chamber. It was a courtroom, with tiered wooden seats lining the rear three walls. At the front of the chamber, there was a tall wooden dais with smaller desks and podiums around it. At the smaller desks there was a mole-like wizard with thick glasses, a quill hovering in his hand; several grim-looking, black-cloaked figures sitting in a crescent along the back wall; two or three other court officials all staring down at me with a mixture of contempt and boredom. Papers and documents were piled in tall stacks all around these minor bureaucrats. But my attention was more immediately grabbed by the woman sitting on that tall, central dais. She wore a frumpy pink dress with a pink bow in her hair, a sparkling ceramic broach of a kitten and a large golden locket, visible from even my low position. It was engraved with an elaborate S. Her face was similar to a small-eyed toad, as if she was sitting atop the biggest lily pad in the pond. From her courtroom throne in the centre of her new empire – made of crowded cells, Dementors, Death Eaters, cruelty and darkness – she looked down at me with an expression of bright, polite interest.

“Dolores Umbridge,” I muttered under my breath, “I might have bloody known.”

“Good morning. Miss Lucinda Baker?” she said, reading from a file in front of her. Her voice echoed around the wide chamber.

“Average grades in your Ordinary Wizarding Levels, and only one passing mark in your Nearly Exhausting Wizarding Test, I see,” she said, her voice full of prim vigour. Then she looked at me expectantly.

“Uh, yes,” I confirmed. 

“One unsuccessful week of employment at the Leaky Cauldron,” she said, as if listing off my CV.

“It was two weeks,” I said. She frowned, tutted and then corrected the file in front of her with a long, pink quill before she looked up again. I felt reasonably smug – I had lied, she had been right the first time. It wasn’t much of a victory, but maybe it was a start.

“Since then, you have made a living of untaxed profit on crime?”

“All of my earnings have been completely legitimate, and fully declared.”

“Including the smuggling, theft, extortion, blackmail, kidnapping and assassination?” she said, looking down at me.

“Do you have any evidence?” I snapped.

“And you’ve used these ill-gotten gains to steal more magic from noble wizard-kind?” she said, ignoring me.

“What?”

“In an effort to turn your mother and father into the same enhanced muggle that you are,” she continued.

“I… No, I never…” I said, confused by such an obvious, complete lack of logic in such a high seat of authority. I’ve seen delusions in management, sure enough, but they’ve all been motivated by incompetence or ignorance. Never such obvious madness.

“We have several signed confessions from Healers at St Mungo’s Hospital for Magical Maladies and Injuries. Each of them testifies that they have been consulted about your mother’s health.”

“Well, yeah, that happened,” I said, cursing, “She had a stroke several years ago and it caused brain da-” I was saying, but Umbridge interrupted me.

“Under further questioning, they have all informed us that this weak excuse was an attempt to infuse your parents with the magical power of other, poor, unsuspecting wizards who were rightfully born to it,” she said, her voice becoming stern.

“That’s impossible,” I insisted.

“How do you plead?”

“What?”

“Guilty, or not guilty?” she asked, her voice suddenly sickly sweet and patronising. “I think it must muddle their brains,” she said in a snide, too-loud whisper to the clerk sitting on the lower podium. He looked up with a start as she continued, “The muggles must have to push out common sense and comprehension to make room for magical knowledge.”

“Fuck you. I plead Not Guilty,” I said firmly. Umbridge looked down at me, astonished.

“Well then, that’s also one count of contempt of court, and another of lying to the commission,” she said.

“… I probably don’t get a lawyer or barrister, do I?” I asked. Sure enough, Umbridge ignored me.

“In total, you now have three hundred and forty two charges against your name.”

“No legal defence of any sort? I’ve never been on trial before. It’s a shame my first time had to be such a badly conducted farce.”

“Three hundred and forty three,” said Umbridge disapprovingly, making a note in the file, “Your sentence is to be sent to Azkaban for the duration of your life, or until you admit to your crime of betraying the natural order of wizardry and confess which rightful wizard or witch you’ve stolen your magical powers from,” she said, raising a gavel in her hand.

“Wait, Miss Umbridge,” I said loudly, holding up my hand, suddenly alarmed.

“I’m waiting,” she said impatiently, the gavel still raised in the air, hovering, waiting to slam down.

“Listen,” I said, gulping, trying to control the slightly frantic edge to my voice, “If you know that much about me, then you know I’m resourceful. We’re both intelligent people, Miss Umbridge. I’m sure you could find a use for the occasional rumour, or precious artefact. If you lock me away in Azkaban, I’ll be no use to anyone. You’ll be surprised how valuable I can be,” I said, smoothing back my hair. Umbridge was sizing me up, looking at me through suspicious, narrowed eyes. I looked up at her defiantly. Deep inside, I was panicking. I didn’t know the new regime would be this insane. I hadn’t known Azkaban was one of the risks I faced – I hadn’t had a chance to clear my mind enough to give it thought.

“I have contacts all over the place, with all sorts of creatures,” I continued, “I can get you information.”

“What sort of creatures?” Umbridge asked, and I felt a slight glimmer of hope.

“Well, any creatures you can name. Goblins, ghosts, Dementors, merpeople. Even centaurs…” I said, with a slightly malign, sadistic edge to my voice.

“C-centaurs? Even them?” said Umbridge, and a look of shock and panic flared up in her awful eyes. She lowered the gavel without banging it down.

One of my centaur contacts that lives in the Forbidden Forest had recently told me a story. It had happened the same night that Voldemort appeared inside the Ministry, when the Ministry finally realised he was back. When Sirius was killed by that bitch Bellatrix Lestrange. Harry Potter and his core squad had broken out from Umbridge’s lockdown of Hogwarts by luring her into the forest, where she mistakenly insulted some of the centaurs that lived there. He told me a little bit about what had happened to her that night, deep in the dark woods, but he’d hinted that there had been a lot of darker, meaner, more violent acts committed against her. Standing beneath her smug gaze with the crowded cells and Dementors so fresh in my mind, I couldn’t help but feel like the centaurs were justified.

“The centaurs? Are we talking about the same thing? I mean the half-horse, half-human beasts, with four great shaggy legs and swishy, hairy tales, right?” I asked, my voice dripping with innocence. I was thankful the centaurs themselves couldn’t hear me now – they’re not half-horse nor half-man. They would proudly describe themselves as entirely centaur.

“I’ve heard they have fleas. And that their women have four breasts. Two on the top and two underneath –” an ignorant misconception “– And as for their men! Well, I’ve heard they can be entirely indecent, with their great, thick horse cocks. Long, pendulous, hairy and barbed.”

I was richly rewarded by the expression of disgust, dismay and remembered fear on Umbridge’s face. I almost felt sorry for her, but not quite – under this woman’s jurisdiction there were Dementors feeding on the happy memories of children. It looked like she was having flashbacks to some appalling horror. I tried not to grin.

“That’s quite enough, thank you,” said one of the clerks, which snapped Umbridge out of her flashback and reminded her of where she was.

“I hear they’re prehensile, like elephant’s trunks,” I said, watching Umbridge’s face react once more.

“Enough, Miss Baker!” snapped the clerk. 

“You were saying how much help I could be to the government?” I said. Umbridge looked down at her paperwork, confused.

“I… was… saying that. Yes,” she said, recovering her prim, girlish confidence. The clerks looked at each other, doubt in their eyes.

“I have to say, Miss Umbridge, I’m very relieved,” I said gratefully, “Could I have my things back? I know you must be very busy.”

“What? Oh, no. That would be far too lenient. You have three hundred and forty three charges against you. Miss Baker, you’re lucky that the Dementors aren’t lining up to kiss you,” said Umbridge.

“But I’m willing to cooperate!”

“And in the light of that, it is the judgement of this court that your wand be broken. You are henceforth exiled from this Ministry, and forbidden from ever doing magic again,” she said, banging the gavel

“… What?”

“Please pass me Exhibit A,” said Umbridge, reaching out her hand without looking around. One of the men behind her in the semi-circle passed her a wand-shaped parcel. It was wrapped in brown paper with a large white label dangling from brown twine. She handed it wordlessly to the transcription clerk, who handed it down to one of the lower clerks. He grasped it firmly in both hands, and snapped it over his knee, unseen behind his desk. Then he ceremoniously passed it back to the transcription clerk, who handed it back to Umbridge. She passed it behind her, once again without looking. Then she fixed me with a wide, smug grin under her gloating eyes, waiting for a reaction.

“If I’m going to be any use to your government, I need to be able to perform magic,” I said, trying not to sound defeated as Ministry thugs approached from the dark doorways at the back of the courtroom.

“That will never happen,” Umbridge said brightly, “Take her away. If we do ever need you, we’ll know how to find you.” She turned back to her file, scribbling on it with her quill.

“Isn’t that the point of not sending me to Azkaban?” I asked, shrugging away the thug’s meaty hands.

“Be very careful about what’re you’re saying,” Umbridge said, looking up at me suddenly with such stern eyes that I was worried all over again. “You’re starting to sound ungrateful.”

“Sorry, ma’am,” I said, finally humbled.

The thugs led me out of the courtroom, and I tried to walk upright and proud, but it was like all the exhaustion of the war and our new oppression bubbled up all at once. I hung my head in weary defeat. I was barely aware of being pushed through the corridors and out one of the back doors of the Ministry.

I landed in an empty alleyway, without even piles of rubbish to cushion my fall. Just the damp, unforgiving cobblestones of somewhere near Diagon Alley. I picked myself up, rubbing my various bruises, stumbling out to the main road with all of its abandoned shops. The usual bustle of consumerism and energy had been replaced by men and women skulking around in the shadows of the burned out buildings and boarded up shop fronts. Something about their gaunt faces told me that they had seen the same cells I had just escaped.

While I took stock of this new world, I watched the population of fresh beggars cringe away from Ministry personnel as they strode down the road. It was pathetic. I wandered down towards one of the exits from Diagon Alley and saw that even Weasley’s Wizard Wheezes was closed. They had stayed open during the whole war, but now their building stood empty. I peered between the boarded windows. The interior of the shop was dark and desolate, empty shelves and abandoned cash registers standing open. At the far end of the shop floor, I could make out a giant, moving poster of Fred and George Weasley. They were waving happily, holding up their various products and winking cheekily at the absent audience in the abandoned building.

I sat against the locked, boarded door and wrapped my arms around my torso, wondering what the time was. I was hungry and cold, which could have been shock and long-term Dementor exposure. A warm meal would fix both, but I had no money – wizard nor muggle. My best bet would be to get out of Diagon Alley, onto the muggle streets, where I could beg for money or else just dine-and-dash in a café or something. I could make my way to my parent’s house and see what had happened, although it might take a few days. But in the end it would take much, much longer than I thought.

The only traffic in Diagon Alley was agents of the new regime. Most Ministry staff were coming and going through the re-established Floo network. Those few who did come out into the street hurried away from the ‘wandless’, ignoring our desperate, clamouring pleas. We were kept away from the usual exits from Diagon Alley. It took me a full day of desperately joining with the pathetic swarms before I realised how futile it was. The madness continued, even here. If we couldn’t leave Diagon Alley, we’d likely die here. Starving to death in a centre of commerce, trapped by bureaucracy and law.  
The magical gas-lamps flickered on as the evening turned slowly into the night. The others were bedding down on the street, wrapping themselves in rags and sometimes each other. Many had broken into the burnt shops and were squatting there, huddling in corners. There were occasional fights over sleeping places, or scraps of food foraged from bins. Low-energy fights – quiet, desperate, weary and slow. Mere squabbles of shoves and clumsy kicks. You can bet a knut to a galleon that I wasn’t going to join them, though.

I had to wait until the Leaky Cauldron closed, then bang noisily on the door. Tom opened it, his bald, gnarled head peering up at me like an angry walnut.

“Tom, it’s me,” I said.

“I can’t let the… uh, the wandless in,” he said. I noticed some swelling on his jaw and a small cut on his eyebrow – healing wounds from a beating.

“I understand, Tom. I know, I saw you driving a couple of them off earlier,” I said, holding the door open, “You didn’t curse them too much. You were always a nice guy, Tom. Always forgiving with the bar tab. Not that I needed it, obviously. I always settled on time. It’s me, Lucinda. I don’t want to sleep here; I just want to get out of the alley. I just need to pass through.”

“Lucinda?” he said, looking up and squinting in the murky streetlight. He looked up and down the street. A thick mist was filling the alley, with shadowy figures still awake and muttering angrily between the derelict buildings.

“Come on Tom. How many years have you known me? Just let me through, eh?”

“Merlin’s beard, woman. Stop your gabbling and get inside,” he said, placing one strong hand on my shoulder and bowling me past him, through the door. He closed it silently behind him, and I felt glad for the first time in days.

“Thanks, Tom. I owe you one.”

“I’ve got some leftover lamb in the cooler, from lunch. Have a drink with me and we’ll call it even, eh? It feels like a damn age since I’ve seen any of the old gang.”

“I shouldn’t stay,” I said reluctantly, “If they find me in here, we’ll both be in trouble.”

“I hear they serve gruel inside the Ministry now,” he said, his voice slimy and sly. I couldn’t help but grin.

“Well, maybe just a few cold cuts. And a beer?” 

“That’s my girl, eh?” he said, hobbling behind the bar.

“So how’s business these days?”

“About as good as yours, I suspect,” said Tom.

“I was locked in a small room with a dozen other people, with Dementors wandering around randomly. Then my wand was broken. I think you’re probably doing better business than me right now,” I said, as Tom wandered into the back room.

“You make a good point,” he said, returning with a plate of sliced meat, “But things ain’t perfect out here either. I’ve been serving my best ale and wine to Death Eaters all week, and something tells me they won’t be so good about their debts.”

“I don’t think it compares,” I said.

“Well, no. But, my best wine,” he insisted.

“They have kids locked up in there,” I said, biting into the cold meat as he drew me a tankard of beer from the tap.

“Fucking monsters,” he muttered, slamming the tankard down in front of me and pouring himself one. I had never seen him drink his own stock before.

We gossiped well into our second pints, long after I had furiously devoured the lamb. The meat and beer felt good, but it felt even better to be back doing what I do – collecting hearsay and second-hand information, filtering it for facts and knowledge. Tom had heard rumours about what the Ministry was doing to muggle-borns. Some, of course, were out in the alley and narrow gaps between muggle spaces. Others were being sent to Azkaban. Apparently the off-shore prison was filling up quickly, and speculators guessed that Dementors might one day grow into a dominant magical race. The armies of the Dark Lord were slowly fighting their way across Ireland and France, while Norway was undergoing its own internal turmoil, encouraged by agents of the ‘The Nameless King’ as they now referred to him. There were whispered, muttered rumours, garbled by repetition, that the Ministry was taking some of the muggle-borns down to the Department of Mysteries for experiments. I couldn’t help but shudder.

There was another rumour that said the Ministry was building facilities around the country to exploit the now-homeless mudbloods. Labour camps and much bigger, more efficient experimentation departments. I could imagine great, black towers of misery and pain rearing up from misty farmlands, with Dementors and carrion birds circling around the spiked ramparts. I could see deep dungeons of sorrow hidden beneath dark valleys, full of children’s cries and clanking chains and the snap, crackle, pop of curses. I saw a grim, evil empire expanding out of Britain to slowly conquer the world, from Sydney to Salem, from Bangor to Bangkok. Lord Voldemort, immortal emperor of the entire Earth.

What with my malnutrition and the strength of Tom’s beer, I found myself rambling about my nasty imaginings. Tom sympathised, but I can’t remember what he said. In this state I wasn’t capable of navigating the London tube and trains and buses, especially not for free. He offered me a bed, and I said something like ‘any as long as it’s not yours’, and we both laughed. I’ve always liked Tom.

I woke up hungover, in a bed on my own. I took a few seconds to make sure that I had been alone all night. After a short while, I remembered – Tom had shown me to my room, both of us shushing each other. He had looked forlorn and lonely as I said goodnight to him, but he was gentlemanly enough not to force the issue, or even raise it. Downstairs I could hear him laying out chairs. It was early enough for me to sneak out into the muggle world with no one noticing, saying thanks and goodbye to Tom on the way.

“Here, take this satchel. And some bacon. It’s still warm,” he said, handing me a canvas shoulder-bag then disappearing behind the bar.

“I can’t take this,” I said, my hangover combining with my pride – stealing from strangers or an enemy is fine, but I’ve always had trouble accepting gifts that the giver can’t afford. He returned with a parcel of tinfoil, with a bacon sandwich inside. It was pathetically small.

“Listen, this is no time to be proud. I’m being as generous as I can. You’ve probably got a job to do. Where you’re going, I can’t follow. What you’ve got to do, I can’t be any part of, Lucinda. I mean I’ve got a pub to run. I’m no good at being noble, but it doesn’t take much to see that some meat and a shoulder-bag don’t amount to a hill of Bertie Bott’s Every Flavour Beans in this crazy world.” He thrust the foil-wrapped bacon into my new satchel and pushed me roughly towards the muggle-side exit of the pub.

“Yeah, okay,” I said, eager for him to shut up – hearing those words from his mouth seemed wrong somehow.

“Here’s looking at you, kid,” he called after me as I left.

It’s been a very long time since I used the muggle public transport. It turned out it was impossible to sneak onto a London bus without paying. And it was impossible to get past the ticket barriers without a ticket – even trying to lie, blag or bluff my way past the staff next to the barriers was impossible. After the ticket barrier staff nearly called the police, I decided to take a taxi. My parents’ house is on the very outskirts of London, which would be expensive. I flagged one down and rode the entire way in silence, both the driver and I listening to the radio. They were reporting earthquakes and strange tremors in France, details of the on-going inquest into the fallen bridges and the strange phenomena being reported all over Scandinavia. The weather reports were awful, and the weatherman apologised for getting it wrong every single time he predicted sun or clear skies. The taxi driver snorted derisively, and mumbled something about how the weathermen couldn’t predict anything. I had him drop me off at a cashpoint in a very northern borough, acted like I was going to withdraw money to pay him and then sprinted off down a road.  
He chased me, sure enough, but I had a long head start. I wasn’t in the best shape of my life, but I had purposefully chosen a great wheezing potato of a driver, so I quickly lost him. More importantly, none of this had attracted attention. I’d spotted no undercover witches or wizards, but I was sure that a few would still be lurking around the city somewhere.

It was another ten minutes of walking to reach my parents’ house, glaring around in case the taxi driver was prowling around, looking for me. I turned into the road, the same as last time. An entirely different scene met my eyes, however. Where my parents’ house had once stood, there was now a burned out husk. The two houses on either side were less burned, but the window panes had been smashed and dirty black streaks of soot, ash and grease flared out above them. The doors were charcoal, but it looked like they had been smashed down before that. Police tape was across all three doorways. It had been strung between the lamp posts outside the houses, but it had been torn down and was fluttering in the harsh wind. The bins had been melted to the pavement. There were some strange marks in one of the empty parking spaces, where the rubber of tyres had melted to the pavement until the car was towed away.

Inside their house, everything was much worse. The coats and jackets that once clogged the hallway had been reduced to ash, leaving the space black, burnt and so large that it felt alien. My parent’s wedding photos were ruined, in their frames in the hallway wall and the stair. I could hear the walls shifting strangely as I carefully tread around the living room, looking for anything that might bring hope. Everything had been burned so badly, I couldn’t make out the scorched marks from the spells and curses. The kitchen had been gutted by the fire. The appliances were all melted, black and distorted. The plates had cracked inside their cupboards.  
I could imagine the neighbours all staring into the ambulance as my parents were loaded into the back. William Grey – the man I had once called my friend – I had trusted him! I had told him to save them! He had clearly done nothing. All of the fears I’d had in the terrible, dark dungeon when everything had seemed so bleak. It was all true. My fault. The Death Eaters had been watching this house. I had brought the worst, most violent elements of my world into the quiet, mundane world of my parents. They were so vulnerable, so unready. I had killed them, as if I had cast Avada Kedavra myself.

The little details stood out as clearly as shining gems in mud – tiny, silvery teardrops in black dust. The tea towels and oven gloves were now feathery and brittle, disintegrating into flakes of ash when I touched them. The kettle’s power chord had melted, but it had been lifted free, leaving a weird, thin line of clean kitchen top surrounded by thick black fur. My mother’s favourite tea cosy – the one left to her by her mother, the one she always remembered from her childhood, with some badly drawn chickens and foxes playing innocent games – was missing. There were no remains where it would normally hang, and I couldn’t see any evidence of it anywhere in the house.

I paused, looking over the kitchen again with a speculative eye. There was nothing to confirm the gnawing hope in my mind. I went out into the hallway, going into the living room. Again everything was black and burnt. But there were no human remains – no boiled fat melted onto the floor, no strange patterns in the fabric of the carpet, no chalk outlines traced by the forensic investigators. I hurried through the hallway, heading upstairs. On my way past the wedding photos in their wall-mounted frames, I glanced at the distorted images. It was hard to tell, but they looked unfamiliar. On the upstairs landing, there were still no signs of bodies or human damage.

There would be no point going through my parents’ room, because I had rarely been inside at the best of times let alone taken in the details. Nonetheless – were coat hangers missing? My mum’s dressing gowns? A few of my dad’s shirts, jumpers, trousers? I couldn’t tell. My own room still felt nostalgic, although it had been turned into a storage room with boxes and bundles of old clothes and blankets, which had then been turned into terrible black piles of charcoal and fused fabrics. There was nothing left in this room from my actual childhood. Which was weird – there had been a noticeboard, with some old postcards and pictures of family, hanging above my dresser drawers. I was sure I remembered it from when I was last in this room.

There was nothing else in the entire house that would tell me anything. But with each missing photo, keepsake or ornament I felt increasing hope. I had been over the entire house several times as I looked for a concrete clue. My renewed hope started to tarnish, and I worried that Dementors were lurking around in the windy sky. I shuffled downstairs, stroking the familiar bannister with its alien coat of soot. The stairs creaked dangerously beneath me. I stood in the garden, looking up at the grey sky expectantly.

The garden was exactly the same. On either side, the windows of the burnt houses stared down at me with sooty glares. But the grass in the garden was clean and fresh. As I walked around, frustrated and depressed, I noticed that even the rusty, encrusted old wheelbarrow that William had hid behind was untouched. I kicked at it sulkily, and it toppled over readily. In the barrow, there were some chalk marks. I sulked away like a child, then realised that the chalk marks were actually hastily scrawled text. The chalk was eroded by the weather, and written in a rough material on an uneven surface, but it said, ‘Everyone safe. Will find you. From Cyclops’.  
I was sure that ‘Cyclops’ was William. My parents were alive. He had done it somehow – fulfilled my orders, saved my mother and father, kept them safe somewhere. Maybe they were staying in a hotel nearby. He was looking for me; might be trying to find me even now. I felt my lip quivering, reading and rereading the uneven chalk writing. A tear ran down my cheek but I forced myself not to cry. Out of all the experiences I had shared with William, I had never been so emotional. I was glad he wasn’t here to see my over-emotional journey, from vulnerable and heart-broken to grateful and relieved.

It wasn’t hard to find my parents, now that I knew they were alive. I checked all of my father’s old haunts, and eventually found a clue in one of the old pubs. It was owned by a muggle man I’d once called Uncle George – in adulthood, I had realised he was a fence for stolen goods and drug deals. He’d been big during the 70’s, but now he was retired and living off the profits of a successful middle-class family-friendly pub. The irony wasn’t lost on me. Luckily, it didn’t take me long to find out from the bar staff that my ‘beloved old Uncle George’ was drinking in the back room with some friends. I hadn’t seen him since I left for Hogwarts.

“Oh, Lucinda Baker. What brings you here?” he asked, looking up from his plate of chips. A few others looked up, too, with varying degrees of interest. There were seven men in the crowded back room. Their table and chairs were the only furniture in this space, apart from a worn, unused pool table.

“You remember me?” I asked him, standing next to the pool table and playing with the cue ball.

“Aye, I remember you,” Uncle George growled, strengthening the thick cockney accent he was infamous for. The thin stubble on his head was still a vibrant ginger, despite creeping patches of grey along his temples and chin.

“Who is she?” asked one of the other men, some scrawny kid in a tracksuit with a gold earring.

“This is the Baker girl. She was before your time, obviously. But when she was a little mite, she and her dad were thick as thieves. She’d always be running around here, watching everyone with her big eyes, quiet as a rock but proud as a mountain. She didn’t half make my Malory laugh and laugh. They were like two souls cut from the same cloth.”

“Who’s Malory?” asked the kid in the tracksuit.

“She was George’s wife,” muttered one of the other men, as the rest of the table looked at the ground.

“What happened, she run off with a banker?” joked the kid, ignorant of the atmosphere.

“She died, you twat,” said another of the men. The kid’s face turned ashen, and he looked at George with fearful eyes.

“Sorry man, no offence meant.”

“Just broadcast my whole fucking life story, why don’t you! Get out of here!” George said in a furious growl, “Everyone get out! And get me a pint on your way! What’ll you have, Lucy?”

“It’s Lucinda,” I said firmly, “I’ll have a glass of wine.”

“Aye, a pint, a glass of wine, two shots of whisky and a fresh plate of taters!” said George loudly, above the noise of everyone’s chairs scraping back. I pressed myself to the pool table as everyone rushed past, noticing the panicked, jealous look of the tracksuit-kid as he rushed past. When everyone was gone, George seemed to calm down. He looked me up and down.

“You ain’t changed. Still skinny as a rake, still watchful as ever. Sit down, girl. I reckon I know what you’re about, eh? I know what brings you here, despite what I asked previously. You’re looking for your dad, eh?”

“Yeah,” I said, trying not to fall into his accent as I pulled back the seat next to George and flopped into it gratefully. This was the third or fourth pub I’d tried – walking everywhere, and the unwelcoming greetings from my dad’s old friends, had taken their toll.

“I know you are, lass. He came to me a few days back, with your mum and a strange old fella like a pirate. Who’s he to you? I quite liked him – he could take his drink, sure enough,” he said with a chortle.

“Where did you hide them?” I asked.

“I was sorry to see your mum like that. She shouldn’t have been brought here,” said George, and any policeman wouldn’t have seen the guilt flickering briefly across his face. 

“It’s not my fault what happened, right?”

“What happened?” I demanded coldly.

“She was massively freaked out, right? I could tell that as soon as she walked in. Then suddenly she screamed some nonsense about curses and wizards. I knew your mum was ill, but I’d no idea she was so affected.”

“What happened?” I said again.

“She should be in a home or something. I mean, they’d probably know how to take care of her, right?”

“My dad takes care of her,” I said defensively. His eyes flicked up to mine as he took a large gulp from his drink. I looked down as if regretting my outburst, and drank my wine.

“Well, she lost her nerve and pissed herself. Embarrassing for any lady, but in this place, with the company I’d been keeping? The pirate fella, he talked to her, calmed her down. Took her to the bathroom, helped clean her up – quite how I don’t know, but when she came back there wasn’t a trace of piss on her. It never sat right with me, your dad sending you off to that weird foreign boarding school with such strict rules. But now I see you’ve turned out right, and how bad your mum was… or was that after?”

“It was a good school. It was my choice,” I lied, not knowing how much Uncle George knew, “But yeah, it was after that when my mum had her stroke.”

At that moment, the tracksuit-kid arrived with a tray. He was carrying a pint of some dark, foul-looking ale, a massive glass of watery wine, two large shot glasses with dark whiskey and a huge plate of chips with what looked like several different sauces squirted upon them. He set the tray down, looking at us both. I followed George’s queue and said nothing – the kid unloaded the tray onto the table and practically bolted back to the red brick archway, disappearing through it without a backward glance. 

“Christ, it’s a strange old thing to see you here, Lucy!” he exclaimed suddenly, and a few flecks of spit escaped over the table.

“Where are you hiding my dad?” I asked mildly, drinking again.

“He’s on the run, ain’t he? I heard he was in a gun fight,” he said, stuffing a fistful of chips into his mouth and chewing with noisy, open lips.

“It was sort of a gun fight, yes. He had the gun. The others had worse,” I said darkly, my patience wearing thin.

“And I reckon you’ve probably seen his house, eh? Burned right to the ground. What’s he got himself involved with this time?” said George with a malign glint in his eye, through a mouthful of potato, “An old blag like your dad getting in trouble with an old debt, shots exchanged, house burned down? I reckon that might be all the police need,” said George, swallowing his chips.

“What are you suggesting?”

“Probably a fucking headline, like something descended from the twins,” he said.

“The twins?”

“You know. Robbie and Reggie! The Krays!” he exclaimed, “The last legacy of the echoes of their era of ‘criminality’, finally behind bars for illegal firearms, burning his house down and insurance fraud,” said George with a grin.

“Can I call you George? I’ve always thought of you as Uncle George, but even that sounds weird to say,” I said, launching my counter-offensive, “Especially now that you seem to be blackmailing me and my family.”

“I just want to know what your dad’s involved with.”

“My dad’s not involved in anything. I thought he was clean?”

“Well, there’s clean and there’s clean,” he said with a grin.

“What if it was me that was in trouble? What if my dad and mum just got caught up in the middle of it?” I asked. George gave me a long, sceptical look.

“What with your fancy education? What made you want to get involved in this murky old world, eh?”

“The money’s better,” I said with a grin.

“Yeah, right. Haven’t you heard the old saying? Crime doesn’t pay, girl,” he laughed.

“Then maybe you’re doing it wrong,” I replied.

“Well, well. I never thought I’d live to see the day that the little Baker girl grew up to become her dad,” mused George through a mouthful of chips.

“Speaking of which,” I said, unhappy with the comparison, “You were going to tell me where he was.”

“Aye, I was. As soon as you told me about what you were involved in. It sounds like a right little money-spinner you’ve got going on.”

“You wouldn’t be interested,” I said.

“Listen, Lucy. I didn’t get where I am today by letting business opportunities just walk away without taking advantage of them. I don’t just give stuff away, alright?” he growled.

“Neither do I,” I said sternly.

“I don’t know who you’re used to dealing with-” George began, but I interrupted.

“I’m used to dealing with all sorts, George. Secret cults, smuggling, assassinations, you name it. I’ve dealt with things you don’t even know exist. Some of them were even trying to steal my actual soul, and some have been bloody ghosts, George,” I snapped impatiently. He was staring at me, stunned at my tone. His hand had been halfway to his mouth, and was now immobile. “Listen very carefully, because I’m getting impatient,” I continued, “You can tell me where my dad is, or I’ll take the knowledge from you and be on my way, with a whole bunch of other information that you probably won’t want anyone to know. I can do it in the blink of an eye,” I said, proudly.

Of course, I wouldn’t get very far in my line of work if I wasn’t a reasonably powerful legilimens. Legilimency is one of the very few forms of magic that can still be performed without a wand. While it’s more difficult, it’s not like George would have any mental defences. It was really only politeness that prevented me from raiding his mind as soon as I realised he knew where my dad was.

“You think you can come in here,” said George as his hand completed the journey to his mouth, “Just because I know your dad, and start going on about ghosts and cults? I don’t know what ‘assassinations’ you’ve been doing, Lucy, but you sound as crazy as your mum!”

“Oh for fucks sake,” I said, and stood up suddenly. Before George could react, I had grabbed his face and I was staring deeply into his eyes.

When you steal specific knowledge from someone’s brain, there’s always going to be some spillage – it’s not a science, it’s an art. So I ended up finding out a lot more about my father than I wanted to from ‘Uncle George’. I got visions of them both knocking over post offices and antique shops in the 80s, then dealing with various European cartels to import cocaine and heroine in the 90s. There were dog fights, illegal boxing matches, match-fixing. However, it wasn’t as bad as I’d always feared – there were very few deaths, and my father had been present for even fewer. There was one vivid memory of George torturing a guy by pulling his teeth out with giant, impractically rusty pliers, and my dad had argued with him about it. Finally, I learned my parents were hiding in one of the safe-houses down in the ex-council flats by the truck stop.

The mental exchange had taken less than a fraction of a second. While he was reeling, looking up into my eyes in bewilderment, I considered killing him. After all, he’d done some very awful things and I’ve always viewed murder as a perfectly practical approach to a problem individual. I once caved in the skull of a Death Eater with a length of metal pipe. I had a boyfriend once who was a vampire, until I drove a stake into his heart.  
But I was in the centre of George’s territory – in his very fortress. So I just patted him on his bald head roughly, with a loud slapping sound, then turned and walked away. As an afterthought, I turned and picked up the shot glass of whiskey, drinking it with one smooth motion. Then I stalked out of his pub before he could make a noise, but he rose to his feet and his puzzled, bloodshot eyes followed me to the door.

My parents were as well as could be expected. They were overjoyed to see that I was alright, and they were practically in love with William, who had seen them safely to their hideout before disappearing. They told me how he’d taken care of them, never pausing in his frantic, concerned energy – explaining to them that the enemy was vicious and ruthless as he knocked the Death Eaters unconscious with a spell. He had helped them recover from the torturous magic they’d been cursed with. Then he helped take their most treasured possessions while he sadly explained that they’d have to fake their deaths and vanish without a trace, which my dad was ready for and my mum was traumatised by. They had made it away just a fraction of a second before the police even turned up.

In exchange, I told them all about the new war. It was all new to them; the Death Eaters, their bizarre and hateful beliefs, the man whose name none of us can say, the world of prejudice and curses. I hated how afraid they became of giants, vampires, werewolves and the terrible, terrible humans. I told them about polyjuice potion, truth potion, memory-wipe spells, mind-control spells, and all the horror of my world. Reluctantly, I told my parents about the holding cells, the crowded conditions, the terrifying prison guards, and finally I explained briefly about Azkaban – the living hell of the wizard prison, now devoted to locking away the innocent. My mum was so horrified that she insisted on making me a cup of tea in the flat’s tiny, badly-maintained kitchen. Meanwhile, my father patted me on the shoulder wordlessly. Of course it couldn’t drive away the inhumanity of my treatment, but it was so heartening and meaningful that I nearly cried.

While my mum was making tea, he told me something else. Back when William had been rushing them out of their house, he had darted back inside briefly. He had said that he’d been safely removing the Death Eaters. But my dad had seen something familiar in William’s eyes. There had been no rumours about living people pulled from the fire. There had, however, been reports of bodies pulled from the fire. No one could tell how many bodies, or whose – because they were all in pieces, and their teeth had been smashed away. The fire had taken care of any other ways to identify them. It seemed clear that William had engineered it, using his ‘magic stick’.

I made the best of my new situation, living with my parents in the council flat. I used up a few of my secret stashes of money and resources, providing us with food and all the comforts of home. It was quite nice to live with my parents again, and it was definitely better than living on the streets around Diagon Alley. I slept on the uncomfortable sofa. There were times when I started to feel claustrophobic, the small flat reminding me of the dark, stinking cells in the Ministry. But then I’d stand at the window for hours looking out at the landscape of ignorant muggles rushing around. The skies were still cloudy, and once I saw a Dementor flying across the narrow margin of sky between two far-off buildings. The news on the radio still discussed strange disappearances and the bridge inquests, but here I felt safe.  
But as the weeks went by, my father could tell how much my mum’s infirmity was weighing on me. Every time she stumbled, or forgot something, I was upset – I thought I contained it, but my dad would read my face. He would try to shelter us both in that annoying, shushing, reassuring way. At times all I wanted was to shout angrily about the unfairness of it all, to sincerely commiserate with my mum. But he kept muting every extreme emotion. Some mornings she woke up confused and terrified about being in a strange place, and she wouldn’t calm down for hours. There was nothing I could do, and sometimes my very presence even upset her more. She felt embarrassed for being so confused in front of her reasonably-estranged daughter.

I needed to get out of the flat for more than just the odd shopping trip. Eventually, the time came when I voluntarily returned to Diagon Alley to find out what was going on. I would spend days there, talking with the wandless and the homeless, the dispossessed and the bitter. But unlike them, I could return to my parent’s secret hideaway at night with the help of Tom smuggling me through the Leaky Cauldron. That was eventually how I reconnected with William Grey, and got involved with the resistance.


End file.
